A Full Push to Ököritófülpös

You’re probably just as surprised as I was to find myself back in Romania.  Being in Iasi ran counter-current to everything I had planned, specifically more QT time with the Ukraine.  In Crimea I faced a particularly acute quarter-life crisis and wondered what on earth I was attempting to accomplish with my life.  I sent a panicked email from an internet café in Simferopol with two possible itineraries, both heavily factoring in the Ukraine in attaining my next set of goals (see maps below).  I figured that yes, I needed to go to Caucasus, and yes, I needed to revisit Albania, and absolutely yes, I needed to see L’viv, but something else was itching at me—a growing desire to visit a seemingly insignificant village on the Great Hungarian Plain: Ököritófülpös.

It had all started out simply enough.  Sometimes you just graduate from university during a recession and the natural choice is to go to Europe with absolutely no purpose or direction except to cross off every country that qualifies as “Eastern Europe” on a list which years of American geopolitical hegemony has subtly etched into your mind (that includes you, Czecho-Slovenia.  “Central Europe” is like saying “Shopping Centre” when we all know it’s a mall.  And besides, which direction from the West is the centre?  East.)  So sometimes you’re in Skopje, Macedonia, and you think to yourself, “What am I doing here?  Where I am going?  What minor historical events in obscure European locales are celebrating major anniversaries in 2010?” and that’s when you happen upon little nuggets like Ököritófülpös and reflect fondly not only on the possibilities of visiting this quaint hamlet on the Great Hungarian Plain, but also on the underlying and nevertheless important fact that someone decided to write and include a link to the Ököritófülpös Barn Fire of 1910 in Wikipedia, in English.  

While I’m certain you paused to look up this barn fire, I will also provide a quick recap: there was a barn fire in Ököritófülpös in 1910.  I conducted a bit of historical sleuthing and it turns out that 368 people perished in this barn fire, seriously reducing the size of this village.  Most of Ököritófülpös’s identity stems from this barn fire, in fact.  While people in Budapest (and most of/all of Hungary) claim to have never heard of it, every so often you meet a Hungarian who still holds a candle for Ököritófülpös, either in memory of the barn fire, or because it has an absolutely silly and unnecessary name.  Perhaps this is just conjecture, but I’m fairly confident that it has something to do with an ox-bow lake.  Anyway, by the time I had arrived in Crimea, Sally was in Turkey.  We had planned to meet up for one last hurrah before she headed back to Canada, and Ököritófülpös seemed like the natural meeting point—the Winnipeg of eastern Europe.  

Nothing could have gone easier for me in getting to Ököritófülpös.  I spent the day in Iasi touring the palace of culture and searching for Chinese food and ultimately buying a pizza (ham and mushroom, obvs) which was 33% off, plus a 10% discount for taking it emporter.  Had I not discovered this little nugget of information only when paying (the total coming to a little over $2), I would have loaded up on another ‘za or two.   Then, with pizza, beer and a train cabin shared with a billowing old babushka, the night train set off through the Carpathians and to Satu Mare on the Hungarian border.  I brought along a couple of beers to prepare me for this night ride, which featured a two hour layover in Dej Calatori, one of my favourite places to be stranded at 3am.  While the train was late by over an hour, the station was freezing cold, and I ran out of pizza (and have been cursing myself to this very day for not getting a second), there was a hot chocolate machine.  The only disturbance on the connecting train was the conductor waking me up abruptly bellowing “Baia Mare! BAIA MARE!” and poking me.  Evidently my response was offputting enough that he did not wake me up when we reached Satu Mare and I woke up on an empty train in the station yards.  

Getting from Satu Mare to the border was easy: it’s literally right on the border and there is a bus.  And while it’s not Schengen, it’s still EU and it’s possible to walk across.  I spent a bit of time at the border eating and drinking coffee for cheap before plunging into the notoriously expensive Hungarian state.  I also fashioned a sign for my destination, in the unlikely chance that there wasn’t an “Ököritófülpös Expressz” bus or group taxi on the other side of the border waiting to whisk me and several others away.  To my surprise, there wasn’t, and I hadn’t even held the sign out before a chemical fertilizer truck abruptly stopped and hollered, “I am going to Ököritófülpös!” and insisted that there was no reason why I needed to as well.  He said I would do better to go to Mateszalka, where a train station actually existed.  I don’t know if you have ever tried to explain to a monolingual Hungarian truck driver why you want to go to Ököritófülpös, but it becomes increasingly difficult to articulate oneself when appreciation for irony isn’t an intrinsic or valued national characteristic.  Nevertheless, he dropped me off in the Big Ö and presumably wished me luck, love, and happiness.